Editor’s Word: This evaluation was initially revealed through the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant. “Lurker” opens from MUBI in choose theaters August 22.
A transfixing morality story cleverly turned on its head, “Lurker” opens with an overture: its protagonist, Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), goofing round for a camcorder wielded by a good friend. When the particular person holding the digicam jokingly asks Matthew the place he sees himself in 5 years, Matthew replies sincerely. “I have already got every little thing I need,” he says, stealing a look into the lens.
Rewind to the earlier than instances, when Matthew resides along with his grandma and dealing as a retail worker at a hip clothes retailer in Los Angeles. In walks Oliver (Archie Madekwe), a pop music artist well-known sufficient to trigger a murmur among the many retailer patrons. Matthew, abuzz with anticipation, pops on a observe that impresses the VIP, and the subsequent factor he is aware of he’s being folded into the small, sycophantic entourage of not-quite buddies and not-quite collaborators lucky sufficient to accompany Oliver on his excursions.
So begins a parable of obsession and loneliness associated with such immediacy that even its comparatively low stakes begin to really feel like life or loss of life. In his debut function, the author/director Alex Russell (who has written for the collection “Dave” and “The Bear”) viscerally captures the advanced dynamics of hierarchical friendships, wherein a concern of alienation and longing for belonging can drive individuals to the brink. The film’s biggest feat is its consideration to the nuances of how these males use mocking or scorn to ascend a rung on their slim social ladder — and if “Lurker” ultimately succumbs to sure style tropes and a handful of story bumps, it makes up for its limitations in perspicacity and the general energy of its filmmaking.
After Matthew catches Oliver’s consideration within the retailer, he ingratiates himself shortly. Quickly, he’s making himself helpful across the star’s Los Angeles pad, performing chores and sucking as much as his circle of buddies. At this level, Matthew remains to be on the backside of the pecking order, an appendage and acolyte who understands the delicacy of his station. We witness his wild desperation to keep up his standing in scenes at residence, the place he screams at his grandma to not interrupt him whereas he’s on the telephone and replays Oliver’s movies to review his style and habits. There’s a by-product feeling to those latter moments; we’ve seen portraits of blind obsession earlier than, and at this level within the film, it’s possible you’ll marvel the place Russell will take the comparatively acquainted story.
These social hierarchies shift in a powerful scene set in a pasture. Oliver’s crew has gathered to make a music video, however quickly into the shoot, the group’s videographer Noah (the gifted up-and-comer Daniel Zolghadri), realizes that he’s misplaced his digicam batteries. Sensing a chance, Oliver whips out his grandma’s previous camcorder and means that he connect it to a sheep’s head for a point-of-view shot. It’s a middling thought at finest, and the composition is totally off. However that’s irrespective of to Oliver, who takes to the concept and whose approval is the one one which issues. Darkly humorous and efficient, the scene proves some extent that Matthew appears to intuit: any energy construction is versatile when you’re keen to problem its shibboleths.
All through, Russell and the cinematographer Pat Scola (“Pig,” “Sing Sing”) display a eager understanding of the place to place the digicam to finest calibrate perspective and emotion. One memorable instance happens after Matthew has ascended to the place of Oliver’s righthand man, and has even invited his personal pal, Jamie (Sunny Suljic of “Mid90s”), to a music business get together. A relative harmless, Jamie finally ends up successful over Oliver’s entourage, a lot to Matthew’s chagrin. As Oliver and his buddies fawn (quite ridiculously) over Jamie’s ugly handmade sweater, Scola trains his digicam on Matthew’s face, capturing shades of envy, quiet rage and panic. These aesthetic prospers discover an auditory corollary in Kenneth Blume’s swelling, spectral rating, which toggles between sinister and ecstatic.
Oliver — a Gen-Z-cusp singer-songwriter a la Dominic Fike — begins the story as a quite easy character. He enjoys the affect he workout routines over these round him, which explains his tendency to hand-pick followers and convert them into lackeys. But because the story unfolds, Russell reveals how Oliver’s fame is an alienating expertise. By way of small appears to be like and line deliveries, Madekwe shines as he imbues Oliver with the real vulnerability of a younger man who tends to doubt himself and his work, and who distracts himself from unease by incessant pleasure-seeking.
Pellerin, maybe finest recognized for his memorable flip in “By no means Hardly ever Generally All the time,” is a worthy match for Madekwe. He’s a gifted bodily performer, along with his gawky body and enormous, fidgety palms helpful instruments as he shifts from anxiousness to anger and again once more. Matthew and Oliver’s alignment as characters is thrown into sharp reduction as soon as the movie reaches a quite far-fetched turning level. The occasions — which the movie all however skips by, lest the viewer begin to query its plausibility — flip the tables such that Oliver turns into beholden to Matthew’s whims, quite than vice versa. In an on-the-nose flourish, Russell scores this about-face with the James & Bobby Purify track “I’m Your Puppet.” Later, the filmmaker takes the literalization development even additional when Oliver and Matthew’s jockeying for dominance is made visible in a homoerotic wrestling match.
These later scenes of energy wrestle undergo from some unevenness in comparison with their earlier counterparts, which seize the subtleties of social maneuvering higher than most. Nonetheless, when the third act lastly arrives, Russell deserves credit score for making the audacious determination to disclaim his characters their comeuppance and as a substitute finish the movie on a cynical notice. “Lurker” is a film about lonely younger males who know that, on the high of their social ladders, extra vacancy awaits them. But they maintain climbing all of them the identical.
Grade: B+
“Lurker” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant. MUBI releases the movie August 22.
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